You’ve probably heard the term ghostwriter before, but you may not be altogether sure what a ghostwriter is and what they do. The word ghostwriter sounds pretty mysterious, but the idea behind it is simply that the writer is a ghost that can’t be seen.

A ghostwriter is a trained writer who will create your content for you and give up all rights to it upon payment. Once you have paid your ghostwriter, they will have no rights to the content and you are free to use it as you wish. You can edit it in any way and even put your name on it as the author. When you’re hiring content to be written on your behalf, you probably want to put your own name on it. In order to do this, you need to hire a ghostwriter.

A ghostwriter stays in the background and doesn’t take credit for the content, although they may sometimes be acknowledged. When you see a book by a celebrity written by the celebrity “and” someone else or “with” someone else, you can be sure that the someone else is the ghostwriter who did all or almost all of the writing. Charles Barkley famously claimed that he was “misquoted” in his autobiography and that he had not even read it before publication.

Once you realize how common ghostwriting is, you probably won’t ever look the same way at books in the bookstore! Believe it or not, many books have had the participation of a ghostwriter for all or at least part of the book.[Read more…]